


everything just goes that way

by frominfinitieswithin



Series: every kingdom [2]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, F/M, Missing Scene, Season 8
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-12
Updated: 2020-04-12
Packaged: 2021-03-01 20:02:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,603
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23612722
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/frominfinitieswithin/pseuds/frominfinitieswithin
Summary: He can still feel the warmth of Sansa’s skin from where they’d been pressed together, just moments ago—can still taste the feel of her lips on his tongue.It has always been wrong, what happened between them before he left for Dragonstone, but with Davos stumbling upon them now, Jon feels that familiar self-loathing prickle under his skin even more than usual.“Forgive me, Your Grace, but if something is going on with you and the lady Sansa, then—““Nothing is going on,” Jon cuts across in a sharp tone, swallowing thickly. He turns and faces the courtyard below them, gloved hands curling over the cold stone. Below, both of Daenerys’s armies are now intermingled with his own Northern bannermen and wildlings alike, all preparing for the war that lies ahead.or a companion piece to everything must start again anew where Jon and Davos have a talk on the ramparts.
Relationships: Jon Snow/Sansa Stark
Series: every kingdom [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1699615
Comments: 13
Kudos: 103





	everything just goes that way

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LadyAlice101](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyAlice101/gifts).



> hi everyone-I got some requests in the comments of 'everything must start again anew' asking for a follow-up where Davos confronts Jon, so here it is! I'm thinking about potentially doing one last part to this since all I've got is time in quarantine but let me know what you think.
> 
> as usual, super grateful for any and all feedback, thanks for reading!
> 
> title from everything by ben howard

He watches her cloak billow behind her, as she brushes past him on her way back into the castle. Her copper hair shines brightly against the white of the sky and the snow and it takes everything for him to not go after her, for him to pull his attention away from her and to the raven scroll that Davos has just handed him. 

The paper feels heavy in his hands, as his eyes scan it over and over again and Tormund’s handwriting is barely legible, but the message is certainly clear. 

Last Hearth has fallen. The dead will be on their doorstep sooner than they know. 

_Dark wings, dark words,_ Lady Catelyn had always said, the words ringing in the back of his head.

Jon closes the scroll in his palm and inhales a deep, ragged breath, trying to keep the fear and the panic at bay. He had long known to expect that winter would come for them all one day—they were the words of his father’s house after all—but now that death lurks on the horizon, the weight of the world on his shoulders feels stifling. 

Behind him, Davos clears his throat, before addressing him. “Your Grace, if I may…” He trails off and the silence causes Jon to raise his eyes from where he still stares at the scroll and look over at his Hand.

He can see Davos reaching for the right words, sees the conflict written across his face and Jon interjects before he can continue.

“Don’t,” Jon warns, his northern brogue sounding dangerously low. 

A long stretch of silence passes between them and he can feel that familiar shame slowly creeping its way up his chest, trying to claw at his throat. He can still feel the warmth of Sansa’s skin from where they’d been pressed together, just moments ago—can still taste the feel of her lips on his tongue. 

It has always been wrong, what happened between them before he left for Dragonstone, but with Davos stumbling upon them now, Jon feels that familiar self-loathing prickle under his skin even more than usual. 

“Forgive me, Your Grace, but if something is going on with you and the lady Sansa, then—“

“Nothing is going on,” Jon cuts across in a sharp tone, swallowing thickly. He turns and faces the courtyard below them, gloved hands curling over the cold stone. Below, both of Daenerys’s armies are now intermingled with his own Northern bannermen and wildlings alike, all preparing for the war that lies ahead.

He thinks back to another time he’d stood right here, Sansa by his side, as he’d watched the red woman become as small as an ant in the horizon, riding away from Winterfell forever.

By then, she was barely his sister again, yet more than she ever had been in the past. And even still, she was all Jon had, when he’d awoken at Castle Black with the betrayal caused by his brothers’ blades splayed across his chest. When she’d begged him to help her retake her Winterfell, he couldn’t say no, even when he’d wanted to—would have laid everything down on the line to give Sansa what she wanted. 

( _Had_ laid it all down on the line when he’d abandoned his sword belt before Ramsay’s army, on the battlefield, in the name of Robb and Rickon and everything Stark.)

Jon had asked himself, so many times since then, whether he’d come back from the dead differently. Whether death had permanently carved its way into his marrow and become a part of his very being. He knows the answer, of course. He’s sure he’s come back different, having killed both the boy and the man he was before.

The man he was before would have never looked upon his sister with a gaze that could be deemed anything other than brotherly, after all. His eyes would have never lingered on the bow of her mouth or the dip of her waist before he had died and come back.

“Begging your pardon, but it didn’t look like nothing.” Davos holds Jon’s wary gaze, hands held behind his back. “It looked more like something that’s happened between the two of you before.”

Jon clenches his jaw, a dark look passing over his face, but he does not answer. Just stares resolutely back at the other man, letting his silence answer the question for him instead.

“So it _has_ happened before, then?” Davos asks, voice gentle, but still steady and unwavering against Jon’s glare. 

“Once,” Jon breathes out, his warm breath visible in the air when he speaks. 

Once, when he’d come to her chambers to say goodbye, the night before leaving for Dragonstone.

Once, when he hadn’t wanted to fight with her anymore but had wanted to just breathe in the scent of her one last time before sailing off in the morning.

( _Once_ , he remembers, when he’d fucked her against her desk instead, after moons of dancing around each other, his hands fisting in that copper hair when he’d spilled inside of her.)

Davos nods slowly, silently processing the admission. “It cannot happen again, Your Grace.”

“I don’t think I have to remind you of all people that that isn’t the way of the North—that the Northern lords would never accept it,” Davos continues, stepping closer to where Jon stands and overlooking the courtyard below them. “You asked me to advise you—to be your Hand—and I wouldn’t be doing a very good job if I didn’t advise you against this. This won’t just destroy the two of you. It will destroy the North as you know it.”

Jon huffs out a wry laugh at this, nodding his head disbelievingly. “What will destroy the North is the Night King and his army. He will destroy all of us if I don’t put all of my focus, _all_ of my energy into defeating him.”

“And past the Long Night? If we make it to see the dawn by the grace of all the gods, what happens next?” Davos inquires, raising his pensive gaze from the soldiers below and back to Jon. “And what of Daenerys Targaryen? From what I understood, she’s more than just an ally to you now. These are the questions we must answer now, the things we must prepare for _now,_ Your Grace.”

He hadn’t thought about much, past returning to Winterfell, knowing Bran and Arya would be awaiting him back home and safe at last. Knowing that Sansa would be waiting for him like always, the one constant in his life, everlasting like the roots of the weirwood tree. 

Jon releases a sigh coming deep from within him and wipes his hand over his mouth, closing his eyes. “We needed her dragon glass. We needed her armies, her dragons—everything she has, we needed, if we want even a shit chance of surviving this. I did what I thought I had to do to save the North, to save all of us.”

When they’d first entered the abandoned throne room at Dragonstone, Jon had been taken aback at the sight of Daenerys, white hair glowing brightly against the grey backdrop behind her while Missandei had listed off her many titles. Of course he had found her beautiful, that part of her reputation had already preceded her. But what she could offer them had attracted Jon to her far more than her beauty.

_You have to be smarter than Father. Smarter than Robb._

He’d said the words to himself every morning since waving goodbye to Sansa over his shoulder that cold grey morning, the desire to protect both her and the North burning even more fiercely than it ever had before. Growing up, it was his only wish, to be a true Stark and a lord of Winterfell, the charades he played with Robb and Theon in their youth being the only time such dreams could come to fruition. 

(The sharp, sour shame of being a bastard had permeated every inch of the Winterfell he knew before until it had become suffocating, until he’d had no choice but to leave for Castle Black.)

But now he is a king, _the King in the North,_ and he doesn’t have the luxury to dwell on the past. Of times when he was nothing more than the bastard of Winterfell, and then a Lord Commander, and then somehow nothing all over again before a sister he’d barely known had come back to him.

He can only look forward now, to protect everything they’ve worked for, everything that they’ve built together. To protect everything that is _his._

“If Tyrion is smart, and we both very well know that he is, he’ll suggest a marriage alliance between you and Daenerys,” Davos tells him, pulling Jon out of his earlier reverie. “And if Daenerys is smart, which she’s certainly proven to be thus far, she’ll accept his proposal.”

“She obviously wants the North and marrying you is the most surefire way to keep it,” his Hand continues. “With you by her side, she can sit on the Iron Throne and know that the North will heel, whether it’s under the threat of dragon fire or simply because of fealty to you. Either way, when this is all over, I don’t think she plans to leave for King’s Landing without you by her side.”

“I won’t leave the North and chain myself to the Iron Throne simply to repay her a debt,” Jon retorts, frustration lacing his tone. The lines are blurred, when it comes to the dragon queen, and even though everything he’s done has been to avoid his father’s mistakes, it seems that he stands here on the ramparts a northern fool nonetheless. “I will lead the northmen to stand against Cersei with Daenerys and then I will lead the northmen back home.”

She had told him that she wanted to make the world a better place, said that she wanted to break the wheel, when he’d first landed on Dragonstone and he had believed her. And when she’d saved his life north of the Wall, he had known then that he could at least trust her. 

Falling into bed with her, however, had been another story. 

He wants to be able to say he did it all as part of some well-thought out plan, mapped out like the battle formations on the table in the council room. He wants to say he did it because she’d waited for him to return, had had faith in him that he would make it back, before setting sail to White Harbor. 

But the part of him that holds onto those base desires all bastards allegedly have, the desires Lady Catelyn had always warned her eldest daughter about, knows that he found his way between Daenerys’s thighs to drive the memory of Sansa’s heat from his head. 

(He finds he can live with the shame from bedding Daenerys if it saves him from facing the shame of seeking his sister’s touch).

“And the lady Sansa?” questions Davos, as if he’s just read Jon’s mind. He inhales deeply, considering his next words thoughtfully. “Even if you don’t wed Daenerys, you will have to wed someone. Someone from a good and loyal Northern house. And that will be made very difficult if there are whispers of you bedding your sister.”

“You’re treading on dangerous ground here, Ser Davos,” Jon replies. He throws another dark look in Davos’s direction and he can feel the muscles of his jaw twitch.

“I mean no disrespect, Your Grace. But I’ve seen the way you look at her. And if I can see it, it won’t take long before others can see it too,” Davos assures, voice having become gentler from its earlier questioning tone. 

He has always worn his heart on his sleeve, so it should be no surprise that he shows his need for his sister with his every glance, his every move. 

He needs her like a sickness, he thinks, the realization rattling through his skull with a kind of force. A sickness that rots away at him, devouring even the parts of him that had stayed dead after the red woman’s magic.

“What would you have me do?” Jon whispers. He closes his eyes against the cold, brisk wind and he can feel snowflakes catching on the furs along his throat. The cloak Sansa had sewn him graces his shoulders and he rubs his hand absentmindedly over the engraved wolves along the straps. 

What would he have him do when it was Sansa who had pulled him up from nothing, when it was her who had saved his life the first time, when it was her who had deemed him a Stark exactly where he stands now.

_You are to me._

“When this is all over, when there is finally some peace, marry her to someone else. Someone good—someone who can protect her, someone far away. But keeping her in Winterfell? I’m afraid that can only bring danger, Your Grace,” Davos answers, his tone sounding grave and serious.

“I can’t do that, not after what she’s been through—not after everything that’s happened.” Jon sucks in a sharp breath, nodding his head vehemently at the suggestion. “I can’t,” he whispers, trailing off at the end. 

He remembers the feel of her in his arms at Castle Black, and sharing his furs with her on their tour of the North when her nightmares still loomed like a thief in the night. He remembers the look on her face when they’d named him King, something like pride and admiration and maybe even something else lining her Tully features. 

(He remembers the sounds she’d made in his ear when she came, her tight heat clenching around him, as she’d gripped tightly at his back in the hopes that he might stay).

He remembers it all—a Winterfell from before and the Winterfell of now—and she is there for all of it, both of them like stone and snow, constant and everlasting. 

Maybe it makes him selfish, but he cannot let that go. He will not let that go. 

“If you truly think I’m wrong, Your Grace, then we’ll drop the subject and I’ll never raise the issue again,” Davos responds, clapping a hand on Jon’s shoulder, as he does so. “But I think you know what the right decision is here.”

Both men stare out over the ramparts and Jon is silent, worrying the inside of his cheek as he considers the words of his Hand. He opens his mouth, but everything he thinks of saying turns to ash and he swallows the words back. 

“I’ve seen the kind of man you are, Jon Snow, and you are a good one. And I know good men, even the best men, have their demons too,” Davos says quietly. “But we must take caution that we do not become our demons, that we don’t become the source of our own destruction.”

“I’ll leave to your thoughts, Your Grace,” he adds before turning towards the stairs to head back to the castle. 

Above him, Daenerys’s remaining dragons circle the keep, a quiet threat to not just the impending arrival of the dead, but to everyone north of the Neck. Jon runs fingers over Tormund’s scroll once more, taking a few more moments of solitude before he has to join the men downstairs and lead them into battle like he’s promised.

After all, just like Sansa had told him before he left, from the wings of a white raven—

Winter is here. 

  
  
  



End file.
